Defying the Lycan King (Kira and Derek) novel Chapter 239

Chapter 239: Ten Times Alive

Kira stepped out of the mansion’s front door, freshly settled back into her former bedroom in the main mansion.

Returning to her former bedroom felt surreal. The room was exactly the same, yet everything in her life had completely changed.

She found Derek already waiting for her on the terrace, looking dapper, dressed in a dark suit that fit him like it had been sewn onto him, his hair neatly combed for once instead of raked through by anxious fingers.

He looked, in fact, like a man who had made an effort. A considerable one.

He turned when he heard her, and without a word, he stretched out his hand toward her, palm open.

Kira looked at that hand for a moment. Then she placed hers into it.

"Ready?" he asked.

Kira drew in a deep breath and nodded.

A few moments later, they were walking through Nana’s wing of the estate. The maids and servants bowed low as the pair passed, and Kira caught more than one of them stealing wide-eyed glances at the sight of the King and Queen walking hand in hand again, as though the whole month of chaos had been a bad dream.

It was clear that the palace gossip mill was already working overtime.

When Dot, Nana’s personal maid, opened the bedroom door, Nana was lying propped up against a small mountain of pillows, and Angelica, Kai’s mother, sat in the chair beside her bed.

The moment the door opened, Angelica’s eyes darted over, instantly lighting up at the sight of Derek and Kira standing there together. A warm smile spread across her face.

"You came," she said to Kira.

But Kira barely heard her. Her eyes had gone straight to the bed, and her heart cracked clean down the middle.

Nana looked frail. Pale and thin and small, swallowed up by her own pillows, the fierce old warrior reduced to something the wind could carry off.

Derek had told her everything earlier, how Nana had completely broken down after learning what Crane had done, how the truth of her own son’s evil had drained the fight out of her. But hearing it and seeing it were two different things entirely.

Without a word, Kira marched into the room, tears already filling her eyes, as Angelica rose from her chair.

Nana’s head turned slightly on the pillow. And when her eyes found Kira, they widened, just a little.

"Oh," she breathed. "You came."

Kira nodded, wiping at her tears. "I’m here."

Angelica took that as her cue. She crossed to Derek, gave his arm an affectionate rub as she passed, and slipped quietly out of the room, pulling the door shut behind her.

Nana stared at Kira for a long moment, her pale lips tightening into a firm line. "You deceived me," she said.

Kira’s throat tightened. "I’m sorry, Nana."

"How could you let Derek talk you into such a thing?" Nana’s voice was thin, but the hurt in it rang clear as a bell. "I trusted you, child. I took you in as a daughter. From the very first day."

Kira shook her head, her heart aching as she took a seat on the edge of the mattress. "I know," she whispered. "I know, and I’m so sorry. There are no excuses for what we did."

Derek finally crossed the room and lowered himself onto the seat beside Kira, taking her hand in his.

"Nana," he said quietly. "I’m truly sorry for everything. But if you must blame someone, put all of it on me. Kira only went along with it out of helplessness, and out of fear of me, at the time. The deception was mine from the start. I forced her into that corner. She deserves none of your anger."

Nana looked between the two of them, her sharp old eyes moving from face to face, and even frail and half-swallowed by pillows, that gaze still missed nothing.

"I saw the spark between you two," she said. "With my own eyes. Day after day. Are you going to sit there and tell me all of that was fake as well?"

Kira and Derek exchanged a glance. Neither of them could find a single word.

Nana waited. Then her brow lifted, imperious as ever, illness or no illness. "Well? Am I going to get an answer or not? Were you never in love? Either of you?"

Kira’s mind raced. The truth was a tangled, wounded thing, and Nana in this state could not be handed a tangled, wounded thing. So she chose the thread of it that was real.

"We..." She faltered, then steadied. "I fell in love with Derek. Somewhere along the line. I kept telling myself it was only a contract, over and over, but... it happened anyway."

Derek turned his head and looked at her. Then he looked back at Nana.

"I also fell in love with Kira," he said. "And I still love her even now."

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